


Working Title tbd

by fendy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: BAMF mary sue, Gen, Mary Sue, Smoking, a lot of smoking, eternal WIP, just like magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-18
Updated: 2014-07-18
Packaged: 2018-02-09 10:37:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1979685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fendy/pseuds/fendy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a story I started writing about some ten years ago. I never finished it. Now I just need a guinea pig to practice translating my own texts into English. This one I would't feel sorry about if something went wrong. (Which is undoubtedly bound to happen any second now.)</p><p>I hope the native English speakers unfortunate enough to come across this text will forgive me for what I've done to their language. (Feel free to correct my grammar should you be so inclined.)</p><p>You should probably stop reading right now. Really.</p><p>And yeah, it's unbetaed - for good measure. So stop reading immediately. I warned you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Working Title tbd

Half an hour before midnight Marfa received a phone call that annoyed her to no end. Not that she was planning on going back to sleep (having had woken up only a couple of hours ago) but she felt decidedly disinclined towards any kind of conversation. 

The day before her colleagues (those proletarian would-be-intellectuals) and herself had been celebrating a scientific discovery she had recently made. The acknowledgement of this fact meant the increase in the amount of work and responsibility rather than a pay raise but there seemed to be a crying need for a celebration so they had one. The result - the evening our story starts Marfa woke up in a rather sour (even more so than usual) disposition and since then was sitting at her desk, improving her health and spirits with brandy and trying to build out of pencils that littered the desk something between a fullerene** molecule and a _Mantis religiosa_ *** that was run over by a road roller. 

The phone rang exactly the moment Marfa was adjusting a new extremity to the _Mantis religiosa_ (or the fullerene molecule). She started; her hand twitched and swept half the construction from the desk. On her way to the phone Marfa stumbled over a pile of books, then her foot got tangled in a pair of jeans lying around on the floor, then she stepped into an astray... All in all, as she finally picked up the phone...

"Speaking." This came in a polite icy tone that meant one of the last stages of fury followed only by homicide.

"Hello there, Marfusha!" bellowed the head of the lab's voice. "Did I wake you up?"

"Good evening, Kyrill Antonovich. Not at all," answered Marfa even more politely. "You know, the scientists lot, we live by night" she added leaving no doubt that she didn't consider _him_ one of the "scientists lot". 

"Wonderful!" Apparently, the head of the lab on the other end of the line was shouting into a megaphone. "The thing is, Sasha's wife is having a baby and his project is in a hot stage right now. The data has to be analysed as soon as possible and there's nobody there! Everyone's on vacation. Do help us out, there's a good girl. You're our great scientist now. Who else if not you?"

"Very well, Kyrill Antonovich" replied Marfa elegantly gritting her teeth as the degree of her politeness passed the mark saying "n+1". "I will dedicate my full attention to this task first thing in the morning. Good night".

She hung up wishing the phone button to be a trigger attached to the gun pointed at her bosses head.

***

The sickly big city sunrise was seeping through narrow gaps between gloomy apartment blocks next door. The first rays of this nature phenomenon found Marfa in the kitchen of her one-piece apartment, surrounded by innumerable unfinished mugs of coffee, two overflowing ashtrays and several broken pencils. It was more than crystal clear that she wasn't in a particularly good mood. 

At least it was more than crystal clear to the people she met on her way to work. The old lady in the lift gave a feeble squawk and pressed her back into the wall. Well, there was nothing that could be done about it. The old lady - just like all people of her age (ninety going on hundred) - was a bit old-fashioned. Short pitch black dyed spiked hair, fashionably creased black suit, very dark shades and a smoking "Sobranie" cigarette in the corner of Marfa's mouth were an insult to the old lady's aesthetic ideas about the looks of descent twenty-somethings.

Her other neighbour's St. Bernard dog ran away with a pitiful wail and its tail between its hind legs. 

The conductor jumped off the tram. 

The people on the metro made place so she had half a car for herself...

Long story short, Marfa's way to work that day was quite a normal, usual, boring and tedious affair.

She gave a gloomy look from behind her shades by way of showing her ID-card to the security guard. The only person she condescended to having a conversation with without her sun glasses on was her boss. And it was the latter's lab she was headed to. She gave him another of her looks - this time straight from her blood shot eyes, received a CD**** with the data she needed to analyse, growled something that very remotely sounded like "Good morning" and left for her own room where she spent the rest of the day immersed in cigarette smoke, coffee and spread sheets on her computer.

The way back home was pretty much the same as the way to work - only in the reverse order: growling at her boss, glowering at the security guard, panic at the metro, conductor jumping off the tram, the wailing St. Bernard dog...

However before Marfa had the pleasure to meet the squawking lady at the lift she was destined to meet another person on her way. Two people, to be precise, but at that point it was yet unknown to our heroine. Right at the entrance to her apartment block, shooting wary glances at the graffiti-covered wall, there stood a very gloomy looking bloke in a very funny black cloak that looked like a priest's cassock or something at least just as exotic. Marfa was slightly surprised as the man didn't show any signs of running away at the sight of her. He just stood there. She gave a mental shrug and proceeded to the door.

Her hand was already on the rusty door handle as the stranger finally said: " _Miss Karamazoff_?"

"Very funny" thought Marfa angrily. The bloke just kept standing around, shooting her hostile looks from under his greasy black hair hanging to hide most of his face. His only feature not hidden by his hair was his long crooked nose protruding from behind the greasy black curtain. Having a nose like this it looked as if the stranger was sniffing the air with disgust. This could actually had been true because the St. Bernard dog hovering on the lawn in front of the door wasn't exactly ozonizing the surroundings.

" _Miss Karamazoff_ , we need to talk" said the stranger in English. His tone was rather exasperated as if giving Marfa to understand that he wasn't at all delighted by the prospect of the coming conversation. 

"I dread to ask about what", answered Marfa, likewise in English, the exasperation in her voice leaving that of the stranger behind. "And I dread even more to ask as to how come you know my name."

"I have been given your address by a certain _Mr Ivanoff_ " said the man in black with disgust. "The name came with the address." For a moment Marfa felt a surge of sympathy towards him for his aversion towards the head of her research institute whom she rather despised herself (that is, even more so than her other colleagues).

She shrugged by way of an answer, meaning that the head of the institute could have been of course doing anything that came into his head, unencumbered by a brain, but this was his own business, not hers at all. The stranger seemed to have appreciated her pantomime. 

"The matter I wish to discuss concerns the recent discovery you have made, _Miss Karamazoff_ " he said pulling a face. "So I'd rather we don't discuss it in the open where we could be overheard. Maybe you could try and to extend your hospitality as far as inviting us into your modest abode?"

"Us - meaning "Us, the Ruler of the Universe" or something?" thought Marfa. "The guy is definitely gaga." She gave the man with a bug in his Matrix***** a haughty look from under her shades. Upon doing so she discovered a cat sitting at the man's feet. The cat looked like some sort of stone idol that happened to have swallowed a ramrod. "Yeah, right... Thanks a lot, Mr Head of the Institute..."

"I could" she said eventually, leaving no doubts that only a very brave person could invite such a character into their home - and only out of excessive kindness towards wandering lunatics. She opened the door with a flourish and waited for the stranger to come in. However he let the cat come in first and only then followed himself. Pulling a face, Marfa followed.

There was a dead silence in the lift that didn't end as the strange procession of two people and a cat entered the flat. After several moments of nerve-wrecking silence Marfa asked venomously: 

"May I venture to ask whether you would like some coffee?"

"Don't trouble yourself" answered the stranger just as venomously. "We would like to get to business". 

"Be my guest" said Marfa irritably, turning to her desk to retrieve a cigarette from a spare pack she always had laying around within a reach. As she turned back there were already two people standing in front of her. Nearly swallowing her cigarette in surprise, Marfa stared at the woman who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. She was wearing an emerald green cloak, her dark hair had been tied to a tight bun on top of her head and on her nose sat spectacles with rectangular glasses. A hallucinatory mixture of a grammar school teacher and a nun of the Order of St. Michurin, the great Martyr******.

The cat was gone.

"Let's get to business then" said the stranger, clearly enjoying himself now. "But first let me intoduce my colleague, Professor McGonagall" The woman inclined her head. "And my name is Severus Snape" solemnly uttered the man in black.

The thought of shaking each other hands hadn't crossed the mind of anyone present.

**Author's Note:**

> * The beginning line of Goethe's "Faust": "Ye waverin shapes, again ye do enfold me" (1912 English translation by Bayard Taylor) (found on Project Gutenberg)  
> ** I used to know it ten years ago. It's got something to do with carbon atoms. Just do your research.  
> *** An insect looking like a bunch of sticks. Or pensils. Or whatever.  
> ****10 years ago, remember?  
> ***** Back then "Matrix" was still something to talk about.  
> ****** Michurin had something to do with plants. Plants are green. Green cloak... See what I mean?
> 
> The second names in italics refer to the cliché way of spelling Russian surnames in literature and movies. Marfa's surname would have been "Karamazova" and her boss's - "Ivanov".  
> And yes, "Karamazoff" is - of course - as in Dostoevsky's novel. There's another thing about Marfa's name too, but I'll explain it later, if I ever get to translate another chapter.


End file.
